My question is how to make a more productive band practice? Our current band practices consist of me(guitar and vocals) and my friend(bass). We start off by picking which of our houses to go to, then we set up and jam through all of our songs. If we feel were having trouble with any of them, then we figure it out and work through it. after this is done If one of us has come up with a riff, then well show eachother(it may become a song). when this is over we usually just a have an all out improv session. THEN we usually end up at the mall chasing girls around and looking at cd's. we soon go to a music store and grease up the instruments. We retire in the wee ours of 9:00 pm(Curfew) and jam through all of our songs a couple times. finally we sleep. Wake up. one of us go home. THE END. Btw.. none of this is planned, more of a pattern actually.
Could our Rehearsal's be more productive in any way ? Thank you and sorry about the length.

Read what you just wrote and tell me what you think you could do to be more productive. If I was that productive where I work, I wouldn't be there anymore. Reread that and I think you'll realize where your time is being wasted.

The main thing is to really listen when you're playing through the songs you have. I mean really listen. Watch for parts where you might be falling out of time with each other, even slightly; try to spot parts that sound weak or undefined or anything less than perfect. If you find one, work on that alone for a while; either loop that section over and over for a couple of minutes or play it, identify where you went wrong and why and see if there's something you can do about it.

Example:

My band have a song with a reasonably fast main riff for the kind of music we play (solid 16ths around 150bpm) and it's sounded kind of rough for a while. We looped it over and over for a couple of minutes and really listened to what was making it sound off. We generally agreed that the keyboard sound was a little too echo-y so having cut down the reverb and delay on it we looped the riff again and now it sounds a good bit clearer. It still needs a little work since it's a unison line across 3 instruments with solid double-kick but the process we went through to improve it is very much applicable to anything.

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R.I.P. My Signature. Lost to us in the great Signature Massacre of 2014.

Thank guys! And i didnt mean to sound like we spend the whole time chasing girls and messing around. We usually start practice around 1:00pm and stop at 8:00pm with few breaks. Thats about 8 hours of me and my friend with eachother, now, i could play guitar for 1,000,000,000 hours by myself with no problem and im sure my bandmates the same way. We just tend to get a little short with eachother spending all that time together. So we usually just go hang out for a bit. This next time Well try NOT going to the mall.

Play more, learn more, and listen to more music. And FYI, we don't need to know about you deciding where to play, or setting up. Most of that is assumed. And why is this in the GT forum?

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Quote:

Originally Posted by Geldin

Junior's usually at least a little terse, but he knows his stuff. I've always read his posts in a grouchy grandfather voice, a grouchy grandfather with a huge stiffy for alternate picking.
Besides that, he's right this time. As usual.

my drummer lives on a huge farm, we usually practice out at his house.. we've been known to practice a few songs and then go out and joy ride around on large farm equipment. at points during practice we end up switching instruments or me playing random guitar solos. the best way to stay on track is to tell everyone we're gonna play for (X-amount of time here) or through this set list etc (X times) or work on this. it can be difficult to stay on track some times, but its just something that needs to be done.